


Next year in Jerusalem

by Em_Jaye



Series: The Long Way Around [18]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, F/M, Feelings Realization, Friends to Lovers, Idiots in Love, Jewish Darcy Lewis, Jewish Holidays, Mutual Pining, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Roommates, Seder Pesach | Passover Seder (Judaism), Slow Build, Slow Burn, Steve Rogers Feels, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-10
Updated: 2019-10-10
Packaged: 2020-11-28 16:06:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20969288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Em_Jaye/pseuds/Em_Jaye
Summary: Woody Allen once said, 'If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans." With that in mind, Darcy had to wonder if there was anyone who could make God laugh quite like Steve Rogers.April 1973: Passover





	Next year in Jerusalem

**Author's Note:**

> Heads up: This chapter is written by a recovering Catholic who has attended exactly one Passover Seder, about twelve years ago. That being said, I did do research, plumbed the depths of my memory, and asked for some help on the pronunciation/phonetic spellings. (Thank you, rosiedeplume and nobutsiriuslywhat! You are wonderful and I love you!) I also borrowed from the most recent season of Glow because Melrose's impromptu Seder reminded me of something Darcy would do to feel a connection to the family she's missing and...well, here we are. Glow is amazing, please watch it. 
> 
> The last thing I want to do is offend anyone if I got something wrong. In fact, I almost didn't finish writing this piece because I didn't want to offend anyone. But I truly believe that the fandom (and the world) needs more Jewish Darcy Lewis and how am I helping to be the change I want to see in the fandom if I'm afraid to write out of fear that I'm getting something wrong? So. I apologize if I misremembered/misinterpreted something I read or saw. I tried my best and have nothing but respect and admiration for the Jewish faith.

Three blank white cards lay flat on the glass case. Darcy took a deep breath and picked up the first to hold it to her nose.

Nope.

She tried the second one and almost choked.

Definitely not.

Feeling disheartened, she reached for the third choice, telling herself that this would be the last one she’d try for the day.

“Looking for something special?”

Darcy looked up to find a woman a few years older than herself—Lizzie’s age, she thought without meaning to—approaching from the other side of the counter. She forced a smile and shook her head. “I’m just looking,” she said and pushed the perfume scented cards toward her to throw away.

Her name tag said ‘Beverly’ and her smile stayed in place as she swept the cards away and straightened the tester bottles. “Are you sure?” Her eyes skated over Darcy’s face for a moment before she raised her thin eyebrows. “Something that might appeal to a…gentleman, perhaps?” she asked with a hopeful half-smile.

Darcy laughed. “Oh, no,” she shook her head again. “I’m pretty sure he’s a lost cause.” Steve was absolutely a lost cause. In the three months since he’d been back from L.A. she’d carefully and painstakingly shoved all of her feelings into a box and did her best to go back to the way things had been before her ill-timed and inconvenient realization. With his heart still tangled and broken over Bucky and their combined fate and future so totally unclear, it was the last thing either of them needed. 

Or so she'd told herself. Over and over again.

But Beverly’s laugh was soft, sympathetic, and there was something in her expression that urged her to go on. “It’s probably going to sound weird,” she said hesitantly. “But I’m trying to find the kind of perfume my mother wears? Or, wore, I guess,” she frowned. Technically, she could have been looking for the kind of perfume her mother _will _wear—a perfume that hadn’t been invented yet. Except she didn’t think that was the case. She remembered her saying that she’d worn the same thing since college. And, if Darcy was doing the math right, she should have been able to find it somewhere by now.

“And you don’t know the name or the brand?” Beverly asked, pink lips twisted in thought.

Darcy shook her head. If she _did_, she wouldn’t have spent the last six months haunting the fragrance counters of every store in the city. Spritzing bottle after bottle on her wrists and scraps of card stock, smelling so many variations of floral and spice and musk that she’d leave with a headache. “I just thought I remembered that she bought it at a department store.”

That might not have been right either. She had no idea where her mother bought her perfume—or where her father bought it for her birthday or holidays. She’d never paid attention. She just knew that she’d already tried five specialty shops and three other major department stores in the bay area without a drop of luck.

“Well,” Beverly picked up on her use of past tense—unlike the woman at Goodman’s who didn’t seem to understand why she couldn’t just call and ask her—and smiled in sympathy. “Take your time looking. If any of the bottles that aren’t out for testing look familiar, just let me know. I’m happy to give you a sample. But,” she reached beneath the counter and pulled out a small cloth drawstring bag. “Here. Smell this in between samples so you don’t confuse your nose.”

Darcy pressed the little bag to her nose and inhaled. “Coffee beans?”

Beverly nodded and Darcy noticed the little gold Star of David she wore on a chain around her neck. “It’s like a palette cleanser at a wine tasting,” she said before she winked. “Industry secret.”

Darcy smiled. “Thanks,” she said before she pointed to the necklace. “That’s pretty,” she said. “Very delicate.”

The other woman looked down and smiled. “Thanks. Don’t hesitate to give me a shout if you need anything else.”

She tried a few more fragrances, but nothing struck any kind of chord in her memory. But that might have been the fault of her distracted mind. Seeing Beverly’s necklace had reminded her again of her sister—she’d had one just like it when they were growing up. Somewhere, Darcy remembered, she’d had one too. Their grandmother had given them each the same when they’d turned thirteen. But whereas Lizzie took great care to only wear hers on special occasions and always put it back in her jewelry box when she was done with it, Darcy had always either forgotten to take it off—waiting until the chain tangled in the thick curls at the nape of her neck and someone had to help extract it from her hair; or she’d drop it on her dresser somewhere _near_ her jewelry box and then wonder where it went when she couldn’t find it a month later.

Officially depressed, Darcy found Beverly on the other side of the fragrance section and handed back the bag of coffee beans. The saleswoman frowned. “No luck?”

Darcy shook her head. “Not yet.” She didn’t want to go home yet—not in this bad of a mood. Not when going home would be just another place where there was no trace of the family she was missing so badly she almost couldn’t stand it anymore. “Thanks, though,” she said with a dull, polite smile before she turned and headed for the front of the store.

It was April—almost three years since she’d been dropped into the wrong decade. Most days, she could keep her melancholy at bay. There was a journal in her bedside table drawer where she’d taken to jotting down the details she could remember of her parents and her sister. It had started out with all the important things—birthdays, anniversaries, favorite foods, likes and dislikes. But then she’d started writing out stories and memories and one journal had bled into a second and a third, and if she went home and started writing about Lizzie’s necklace and her aptitude for making Bubbe's challah recipe just right, she’d need a fourth journal before the end of the afternoon.

She’d only made it to the shoe department when the idea struck her. She turned and darted back to the perfume counter where, luckily, Beverly had not yet found another customer to help. She looked up with a smile. “Back so soon?”

Darcy smiled. “Maybe a weird question, but I haven’t been paying attention to the calendar. Do you know when Passover is this year?”

***

“What are you doing on the 18th?”

“No idea,” Steve was putting his laundry away that night when she broached the topic. “What day of the week is that?”

“Tuesday,” Darcy said from the doorway of his room where she was slowly making her way through a can of vanilla pudding.

“Then…” he paused on his way to the closet with a handful of shirts, “I assume I have no plans. What’s Tuesday the 18th?”

“First night of Passover,” she garbled the words, her mouth a little fuller than she intended.

“Passover?” Steve repeated with a smile and a glance over his shoulder.

She nodded with a blush as she swallowed. “Yeah. Y’know,” she said, crossing into his room without an invitation and dropping down onto the edge of his bed. “When the Jews were enslaved for four hundred years and then Moses was like, ‘Enough of this bullshit, let’s get out of here.’ But then the Pharaoh was like, ‘Hold up. Those are mine you can’t have them.’ And then _God _was like, ‘Technically, they’re _mine_ and if you don’t play nice, I’m gonna fuck up your day—’”

“Darcy?” Steve cut her off. She looked up, surprised to find him looking amused. “I appreciate the reenactment, but I actually know what Passover is.”

“Oh!” she brightened and sat up straighter. “Good! Cause we’re having a Seder.”

He lifted his eyebrows. “We are?”

“Well,” she dipped her head to one side. “I am. You’re coming. Tuesday the 18th. Tell your friends.”

Steve frowned and returned his attention to buttoning one of the shirts over the hanger. “What if I had plans?”

Darcy rolled her eyes. “I would, first, be very confused and kind of amazed,” she grinned when Steve looked over his shoulder again to offer a mild glare. “And second, call you a liar because you just said that you didn’t. Anyway, a Seder is a good time. You’d want to cancel your nonexistent plans.”

“I’ve never been to one before,” Steve said, plucking his next shirt from the pile on his dresser.

“You? Poster-boy for Irish Catholicism?” Darcy placed a hand to her chest and gasped. “Color me shocked.” She watched his shoulders bounce as he laughed and shook his head. “And that’s part of the whole thing—getting to share the tradition with people who don’t normally get to participate. That’s why I need you to invite _your _friends too.”

She didn’t have to be looking at this face to know he’d grimaced. “Does this mean I’ll have to make some before the 18th?”

“You _have _friends, Steve,” she insisted. “People love you.”

“You keep saying that…” he muttered, still busying himself with his shirts.

“Because it’s true,” Darcy stuck another spoonful of pudding in her mouth. “You’ve just gotta let them. What about Charlie?”

“My old boss?”

“Yeah, he loves you. And you just saw him like, three weeks ago, didn’t you? When you went out with the other teachers for Rochelle’s birthday?”

“I guess…” he fidgeted. “I don’t know if we’re _friends_—”

“What are you talking about?” she scoffed. “His wife— Agatha?”

“Abigail,” Steve corrected.

“Right. Abigail brought me a casserole when you got hurt—did you know that?”

“You mentioned the casserole.”

“Because it was delicious and a classic friendship move! Not to mention the fact that he didn’t let anyone know how super-human you actually are—”

“That’s true.”

“_And _he found you a new, _safer _job where it was less likely that anyone _else_ was going to find out how super-human you—”

“Alright, alright,” he hung up his last shirt and held up his hands in surrender. “I’ll ask him, okay?”

Darcy smiled brightly when he turned back around. “Thank you!”

“Who else is making the guest list for this thing?” he asked, motioning for her to follow him out of his room and toward the kitchen.

She shrugged and hit the light on their way out. “My friends—Linda will probably bring her kids, Junie and Ray, maybe Janet if she feels like taking a break from her brilliance for a night.”

Once they’d reached the kitchen, Steve paused with his hand on the refrigerator door. “Can I ask why you’re celebrating Passover after three years of never mentioning it?”

Darcy took a deep breath and dropped into the nearest kitchen chair. “I um,” she felt her lips turn briefly downward. “I miss my family.” Steve’s smile dimmed and she shrugged. “And, I don’t know. Growing up our traditions were kind of all over the place—”

“Your parents are both half-Jewish, right?” Steve took the seat opposite from her.

She nodded. “Yeah, so I got to celebrate everything when I was a kid,” she remembered with a soft smile. “But Passover was one that my mom always hosted—hosts,” she corrected herself. Her mother was _still _hosting Passover in 2013. “Because she loves any reason to get people together and that’s the whole point of the Seder.”

“When’s the last time you got to go to one of these?” Steve asked.

She squinted, trying to remember. “Well, I guess it would have been the last spring I worked with Jane?”

“Jane’s Jewish too?”

Darcy nodded. “More than me, actually.” She smiled. “The last Seder we went to was at Chancellor’s house at Culver, but the year before that, we tried to do one on our own.” Her grin widened. “We had to use graham crackers in place of matzah because there was no Jewish grocery store in Puente Antiguo.”

Steve smiled back. “Isn’t that against the rules?”

She scraped her spoon along the inside of her snack pack and flipped it upside down onto her tongue. “Hey, we tried our best. And fair warning,” she added after a moment’s thought. “If you’re looking for this to be the most perfect of all possible Seders with everything done exactly right, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed.”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine no matter what,” Steve assured her. “But I’ll manage my expectations all the same.”

She swatted at him as she got to her feet again. “Good. Thank you. That’s all I need.”

“You gonna need me to do anything else?” he asked, calling after her.

“Invite Charlie and Abigail to dinner,” she said over her shoulder on her way to the bathroom. She bit back a smile and paused in the hall. “And let people love you!”

“Yeah, yeah,” she heard him mutter before she closed the bathroom door behind her.

***

Having never been to a Passover Seder before, Steve didn’t have anything to compare to, but he couldn’t help but think this was a particularly nice one. It wasn’t perfect—at least, not according to the hostess. But despite all the ways she told him she was doing it wrong Steve couldn’t see anything wrong with the way Darcy was celebrating. The apartment was full of food and friends; everyone more than willing to sit on the floor and listen to the traditions behind each aspect of the meal.

And although he’d never met Mindy Lewis, Steve had to imagine she’d be very impressed by her daughter’s efforts.

Deciding on hosting this event had transformed Darcy’s lingering bad mood almost immediately. She’d gone to the library the day after she’d told him what she was planning and returned with books on Jewish traditions to refresh her memory, interpretations on Exodus, and cookbooks whose recipes she studiously copied onto note cards before she had to return them. It was fun to watch, he had to admit, and made him feel a little better to see her happy again.

Across the room, he watched as she dipped her pinky into her wine glass and waited for the crowd to mimic her. “_Shkhin_,” she said and looked up expectantly.

“_Shkhin_,” they repeated.

She dipped her finger into the wine again. “That was good,” she praised their pronunciation. “_Barad_,” she let the drop fall on the edge of the plate as she’d instructed them all before. Removing one drop of a wine for each plague.

“_Barad_,” Steve said along with the group.

Darcy winced and tilted her hand back and forth. “Eh. Not great, but I’ll allow it.” Quiet laughter rippled through the room and she touched her wine again. “_Arbeh_—that one’s my favorite,” she admitted with another giggle. “It means locusts.”

She caught his eye and grinned. Steve knew he smiled back but was unable to focus on what plague she listed next. He was struck by how blue her eyes were, even from where he was sitting, all the way across the room. He still felt bad; she’d been needlessly nervous before everyone arrived, getting ready with trepidation, biting her bottom lip when she’d come out into the living room in the dress she’d decided on.

“I know I said there’s no dress code,” she’d started, calling from her bedroom before she appeared. “But I wanted to look nice anyway. Does this…” Standing the doorway to the living room, she’d motioned to herself before she grabbed the sides of the skirt and gave it a little swish. “Is this good? Too much? Not enough?”

He should have told her she looked beautiful—that whoever had made that dress must have stitched it together with her exact shape in mind. The color made her eyes sparkle and brought out the pink in her cheeks and lips. But she’d spun in a circle and her skirt twirled just a little and he’d forgotten to say any of that out loud. What had come out was something along the lines of, “Yeah. You look—uh—yeah. Good. Fine.”

He wasn’t entirely sure what he’d said but it had been enough to make her roll her eyes. “Okay, thanks; don’t hurt yourself,” she’d said and held up a hand before she had returned to her room to finish getting ready.

But it was more than the dress he realized, watching her nose wrinkle again when she laughed before she answered a question asked by Linda’s ten-year-old son. It was the way she lit up when she told stories about what traditions had been most special to her family, and the little faces she pulled when she was sure she’d pronounced something wrong, and how much love she’d pressed into every part of this celebration. It felt like it had been too long since he’d seen her so happy and relaxed.

He had missed this Darcy. _His_ Darcy, as he knew he’d selfishly come to think of her. His—

“World Series?”

The words accompanied a nudge from his right that shook Steve from his train of thought and dropped him back to his spot on the living room floor.

“Sorry,” he said, shaking his head as he turned to the source of the question, Tangie’s boyfriend, Darren. “Say that again?”

Darren smiled and chuckled softly. “I asked if you think the A’s got it in ‘em to clinch again in the World Series?”

Feeling short of breath and as if it was suddenly too warm, Steve forced a laugh that mercifully sounded convincing. “I hope not,” he said. “I’m still waiting for my Dodgers to make a comeback.”

“Are you _seriously _talking about baseball while the rest of us are learning about Moses and shit?” Tangie asked from Darren’s other side, keeping her voice low.

“You told me to make friends,” Darren defended himself. “And I thought she was taking a break.”

“Just molding young minds,” Darcy called from across the room, unbothered by the interruption. “But Darren you do _not _want to get him started on baseball,” Darcy went on with a nod in Steve’s direction. “Fierce loyalty and terrible taste. Which, coincidentally,” she flashed a quick, cheeky smile, “could also be the title of my autobiography.”

Steve laughed and tried his best to shake off the way the words _World Series _had crashed into him like a freight train.

Darcy frowned and looked at her plate. “Wait—how many plagues was that?” Without waiting for an answer, she counted quickly and grimaced. “Oh shit, I almost forgot. Last one!” She dipped her finger to remove one last drop of wine. “_Makat b’chorot_.”

“Oh, I like that one,” Abigail commented with a grin.

“Fun to say, right?” Darcy agreed. “Less fun to experience, though,” she added with a frown. “That’s the slaying of the first born.”

“Jesus!” Alice exclaimed, looking horrified.

“Oh, no,” Darcy shook her head without missing a beat. “He doesn’t show up until way later. Whole different book.”

It was much later, after the oldest of Linda’s three children had found the hidden afikomen and the last glasses of wine had been consumed and one poured for Elijah, that Steve offered to run the first bag of trash down to the curb. To his surprise, Janet followed and took a long, slim cigarette from her purse as soon as they’d stepped outside.

The smoke curled from between her fingers as she leaned against the building’s brick wall and smiled at Steve. “You know, I’ve never been to one of these before,” she said with a glance back up to the open windows of the third floor. Sounds of laughter and conversation floated down to the street. “You think they’re all this much fun?”

Steve smiled back and shook his head when she offered him her pack of Virginia Slims. “Couldn’t say,” he admitted. “But Darcy’ll be happy to hear you had a good time.”

He was about to turn and leave her to smoke in peace when her caught the way her smile dimmed. It gave him pause just long enough for her to clear her throat. “Steve, has something—” she paused and frowned in thought. “You do still _want_ to go home, don’t you?”

Taken aback, Steve blinked. “What do you mean?” he asked. “You mean _home _home? Back to—” he didn’t finish the sentence, just in case anyone decided to join them unexpectedly. Janet nodded, still looking concerned. “Of course I do. What kind of question is that?”

She shook her head and took a drag of her cigarette. “It’s none of my business,” she said softly.

He felt his own brow furrow. “What’s none of your business?”

Janet opened her mouth and closed it again. She ran her tongue between her lips and tried a second time. “I was thinking—earlier—that if I could find a way to send you both back where you belong…well,” she exhaled. “If what you’ve told me is true, then you wouldn’t be going back to the same place. Or time.” She glanced up and Steve nodded slowly, urging her to continue.

Even though he knew where she was going with this. And he didn’t want to go there. He didn’t want to think about what it might mean to _actually _go home. To be with his friends and his family again, but to have lost Darcy to her own life, ten years before he even got back.

“I just…” Janet shifted again with a nervous glance toward the open living room window again. “I see the way you look at her, Steve,” she said softly. “And I just wanted you to know that if—” she coughed again. “If you changed your mind—I understand. I wouldn’t want to let something like that go either.”

He could have played dumb. He could have said he didn’t know what she was talking about—that he didn’t look at Darcy any differently than he looked at anyone else. That there was nothing to let go—nothing to risk losing forever when they finally found their way back to their own times.

Instead, he sighed and leaned against the brick beside her. “I made a promise to a lady, Janet,” he said quietly. “I promised her I’d do everything I could to get her back when and where she belongs.” He paused and smiled softly as the sound of Darcy’s tell-tale cackle bounced from the apartment down into the street with them. “She misses her family,” he said, telling himself just as much as he was telling Janet. “Her friends—the life she used to have. And all that’s in 2013…not here. And not in 2023 with me,” he shrugged weakly before he shook his head. “What kind of selfish prick would I be if I kept her from that just because I don’t want to let her go?” There were a few moments of silence between them before Janet reached over and gave his arm a sympathetic pat. “Anyway,” he shook his head. “I thought this was all theoretical. You’re talking like you had some kind of breakthrough.”

“I did.”

Steve blinked in surprise a second time and looked slowly from where he’d set his gaze across the street to the woman beside him. She was looking right at him, no longer fidgeting or appearing anything other than confident and very sure of herself. “You did?”

Janet nodded. “I figured out how to get you both home.” 

**Author's Note:**

> *holds breath*


End file.
